He spoke to a packed house of almost 300 at the North Country Chamber of Commerce's Annual Meeting about a rebirth of the 150-year-old resort and creating a campus-like environment that would include a host of non-motorized and motorized recreation opportunities, a restaurant with locally grown food and a marketplace for local products, and potential to employ more than 1,000 people at a ski resort that would have the best snow in the East, with state-of-the-art equipment and over 1,500 acres to ski (the size of Killington).

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While he would not talk of details about investment dollars and raising capital for the first phase, he did say the climate is right in terms of the economy and the state government in New Hampshire.

Among the issues before going to investors are getting all the issues solved. One plan is to see if snowmaking water can be taken from the Androscoggin River in Errol and piped 12 or more miles to the resort. It would require state and federal approval.

"At this point all these things are tasks," he told WMUR in an interview following his remarks. "A lot of success in development is timing. So right now you've got an underutilized asset in an environment that is ripe for economic growth and needs it, with a state that has a very progressive government attitude towards business."

He said in New Hampshire government leaders "will not only tell you what the problems are but will tell you how to solve them."

"So when you walk into state government, so far in New Hampshire you are greeted with, 'Let me tell you how to do this,' as opposed to then, 'Hey, you've got this problem and this problem and that problem.' So you combine those elements together you are creating an atmosphere where this can theoretically succeed," he said.

"But you still can't minimize the number of tasks required," he said. "We have a vision, we have a direction and now we have to work to make it a reality. And when someone says 'when' its difficult because one task that we thought we could have done in a day meeting in January we are finally in May where we thought we would be four months ago."

And it was not because someone was being difficult, it was just the way it worked out, he said.

He said the plan is to go forth with a phased development and predicted that in the first phase more than $100 million would be spent by the end of 2016.

Otten recently joined a group of local investors who acquired the shuttered hotel about three years ago, began to renovate but ran into issues with capital.

Otten developed Sunday River ski area in Newry, Maine into one of the largest ski resorts in New England and went on to own a number of other resorts. He has been an investor in the Boston Red Sox and a number of renewable energy projects in recent years.